


Lingua Franca

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 10:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14913519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: They made a game of how much the other could understand.





	Lingua Franca

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiagratia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/gifts).



Sometimes, late at night, limbs splayed and skin sheened with sweat, they turned off the universal translators and spoke in their native tongues. They made a game of how much the other could understand – Kate, slow and deliberate as she rounded her lips and folded her tongue, willed Alynna to extract the meaning from second-cousin vocabulary; couldn’t look away as Alynna worked to recall the nuances of Polish grammar studied, thirty-five years ago, in second-year Academy endolinguistics. 

Competition turned sensual, connection forged in softened consonants and clipped vowels, Kate played to win in everything but this. When Kate lost, Alynna got cocky and teasing and quick; Kate’s only hope was to understand one word in twenty, but it was worth it for the way Alynna’s language wound its way from her mind to her throat, from her throat to her tongue to her lips. She took it and formed it and owned it, language nurtured in the loving embrace of her mouth.

Kate was a betting woman, and Kate made bets with herself: how long until Alynna would notice that her tongue had run away with her, that she was speaking too quickly for Kate to understand? How long until Kate’s scientific curiosity would fuse with her arousal and she would lean down to kiss the words from Alynna’s lips? To taste them as they were naturally formed, undamaged and uninhibited by clumsy translation? 

It didn’t matter; she won either way.

*

The first time they met, they were seated on opposite sides of a conference room at a Starfleet Intelligence briefing on biological weapons. Captain Taggart had gathered the information on the _Repulse_ ’s last reconnaissance mission, and Kate was his designated medical expert.

She hated it. What self-respecting doctor would want to be considered an expert on the theoretical means of destroying a species? She stood when required and delivered her report with efficiency – Taggart said “brusquely”, but he hadn’t reprimanded her for insubordination yet – and didn’t linger to make small talk with the admiralty. As far as Kate was concerned, she’d done her part, so she nodded to Captain Taggart (trapped on the other side of the room with Admiral Reynolds, whose single, inexhaustible topic of conversation was his family trip to Betazed in 2362) and slipped out. She wanted to get the godforsaken transporter trip over with as soon as was humanly possible. She and her molecules had work to do. 

She didn’t notice that Admiral Nechayev had followed her out until they were standing in the turbolift together, about-face and staring at the doors. ‘Admiral,’ Kate said, with extra gravity.

Nechayev raised an eyebrow and mimicked her tone. ‘Doctor.’ 

There was a world of character in that tone, in that word; Kate glanced across to where she was standing, rigid and formal, and forced down the curl of her own smile. And people thought Nechayev had no sense of humour.

*

Kate loved the way Alynna spoke when she was off-duty, rich and textured as honey, a three-quarter octave below her professional voice. She slowed her words, just a fraction; a demonstration of ease evident only to those who had already earned the right to witness it. Her sharpness didn’t soften, but it did transform into something more complex, a secret coloured not by the privilege of rank, but by choice. She allowed Kate to taste this version of her – admiral, woman, polyglot, scientist, strategist, martial arts aficionado, classical music lover, food snob – and when she smiled at Kate, to Kate, the jerk of her lips was a twist of lime to cap off Kate’s favourite drink.

*

Near the end of that first meeting, just as Kate was beginning to yearn for a medical emergency, the power to the universal translators went offline. It was just a glitch, an easily-reparable error caused by routine maintenance gone awry, but the two and a half minutes before the right person did something about it was a stunted scramble to ensure that everyone could understand everyone else. Once they had established that the Ktarian engineering consultant spoke fluent Vulcan, and Admiral Suvak was willing to act as a Standard-Vulcan interpreter, things were back on track. Kate sat and listened with interest as Captain Reynolds’ South African accent bled into his explanations, as the Betazoid Starfleet Intelligence officer rounded out her vowels, and as Admiral Voxx chose words with more pause than usual (a blessing to all forced to listen). And then, with a different flavour of interest entirely, she listened as Admiral Nechayev wielded a sharp and deliciously-accented Federation Standard to object to one of Voxx’s riskier plans.

Kate said little, preferring to leave matters of Intelligence to those with more tolerance for bureaucracy, but when she did speak, it was to express her support of Nechayev’s no-nonsense recommendations to act, communicated smoothly in a language not her own. If it resulted in Kate’s receipt of a lilted, ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ and the indistinct impression of a smile, then that was just good fortune.

Two weeks later, Nechayev walked into sickbay on the _Repulse_ just as Kate threw a PADD against the wall. ‘I don’t suppose “good morning” would be appropriate,’ Nechayev said, too stern, and Kate would have been mortified had she not seen Nechayev’s eyebrow twitch.

She composed herself and offered Nechayev a smile. ‘Good morning, Admiral. How can I help you?’

There was a glint in Nechayev’s eye as she said, ‘Doctor, I have a proposal for you.’

Kate blinked. The PADD was still on the floor, but she didn’t move to retrieve it. ‘And what’s that?’

‘I’d like to request your services as official medical liaison to Starfleet Intelligence.’

To cover her surprise, Kate frowned and said, ‘I thought that was Doctor Trivlek’s role.’

‘It was,’ Nechayev said. ‘He has been… reassigned.’

Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘With all due respect, Admiral, why me? And why are you asking when you could just order me to accept?’

‘Intelligence has been looking for a new liaison officer for several weeks, and you impressed me in the bioweapons briefing last month. You know your field, you don’t think like a politician, and I like your candour.’ She smiled, just slightly. ‘And frankly, Pulaski, I asked you just to see if you’d point out that I didn’t need to ask you.’

Kate narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t appreciate being tested, Admiral.’

They watched each other for a long moment, and then Nechayev nodded. ‘I respect that. I’ll be straight with you from now on.’

But hopefully not too straight, Kate thought. She rarely met someone whose appreciation of her “candour” extended to seeking it out, and it was unprecedented that that someone’s cheekbones should be sharper than a laser scalpel.

‘Should you accept,’ Nechayev added.

‘Should I accept,’ Kate said, inclining her head. She closed her transparent office door and gestured to her empty visitor’s chair. ‘Why don’t you have a seat, Admiral, and tell me exactly what this position would entail.’

*

The _Repulse_ ’s tour was due to wrap up at the end of the month, and Kate had been considering taking that research job at Starfleet Headquarters anyway; this liaison position would make an interesting supplement. She would call it fortuitous, but Nechayev was Starfleet Intelligence. She’d probably known all along.

Kate took the job.

*

One morning, four months and three missions and six dinners in, Alynna walked into Kate’s office on the fifteenth floor of Starfleet Headquarters and said, ‘I think we should talk about it.’

Kate, as constitutionally incapable of beating around the bush as ever, clicked off her desktop monitor and said, ‘Go ahead.’

Alynna shut the door, leaned – no, _reclined_ – against it, tilted her head, and smiled. Slowly. Invitingly.

Kate walked over and stood before for, not touching, but taking her in. Alynna’s eyes were warm and dark and fixed on hers, the arch of her body punctuation to the words she hadn’t said, but Kate wanted to hear it.

‘Alynna,’ she said, ‘you are my superior officer, and my dear friend, and I would like to kiss you. If I’m honest, I’ve wanted to kiss you since I first heard you speak Standard without a universal translator.’

Alynna’s eyebrow quirked along with her lip.

‘You are my superior officer, and though I don’t report directly to you, I understand that it would present a conflict of interest for you to approach me. I would have to be the one to approach you.’ Encouraged by the warmth rising between them, Kate took a step closer. ‘Please consider this my official approach. If it makes you uncomfortable, or you don’t reciprocate, or you want me to stop for any reason, say so.’ 

‘Thank you, Katherine, but I think not.’ Alynna smiled, then hooked two fingers into the collar of Kate’s uniform, drew her near, and said, ‘Kiss me.’

Kate did.

*

Two years in a row, Kate earned the dubious honour of being named the most simultaneously effective and contrary medical liaison in the history of Starfleet Intelligence. Alynna deadpanned that she couldn’t understand how Kate managed it, but they both knew the truth: the admirals wanted to keep Kate onside badly enough that they allowed her to do as she pleased, so she ignored politics with a steely, perverse sort of cheer and got on with her work – the important work, anyway. She wasn’t interested in the rest. She worked, and Alynna worked, and they went home and worked some more. Alynna was acerbic and dedicated and unapologetic and Kate loved it. She especially loved that Alynna, small and proud and crackling with energy, was never afraid to yell back; in fact, they soon discovered that Alynna enjoyed yelling back as much as Kate enjoyed yelling. It made for some diverting time off.

Kate sometimes went into space on relief missions, and Alynna was often away on diplomatic business, but Kate found she enjoyed the routine of living planetside. She kept plants, flowers and herbs and shrubs with a variety of traditional uses, a stockpile of emergency remedies – many of which she had discovered through animated subspace exchanges with Beverly Crusher – for the inevitable day technology failed them all. Alynna sometimes stood in the doorway and laughed as Kate tended her plants, laughed until Kate let their names roll off her tongue in Polish and Alynna went quiet, eyes heating, her own lips shaping the words in echo; her own lips moving to Kate’s to share the sound.


End file.
